I Am The Third Wave Feminism Analysis

“I am the Third Wave,” Rebecca Walker declared in an article for Ms. in 1992 and, thus, coined the term and introduced the idea of third wave feminism (41). In her article, she addresses the devaluation and mistreatment of women and stated her definition of feminism:

To be a feminist is to integrate an ideology of equality and female empowerment into the very fiber of my life. It is to search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand power structures with the intention of challenging them. (41)

Literature on third wave feminism is related to feminist literary criticism which is concerned with the inequality of women and the representation of women in literature (Barry 121-22). Feminist literary criticism follows the three waves of feminism: The first wave of

feminism, which arose in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, was concerned with the social inequality of women and, in particular, was interested in the equal and universal suffrage for women (Kroløkke and Sørensen 2).

Furthermore, the second wave of feminism, which arose in the 1960s and 1970s, was concerned with social issues, such as, employment and payment, reproductive rights, and sexual harassment (Kroløkke and Sørensen 7-9). In addition, the second wave of feminism was related to movements that advocated the rights of other oppressed groups, for instance, blacks or homosexuals (ibid.). In their book Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake define third wave feminism as “a movement that contains elements of second wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power

structure while it also acknowledges and makes use of the pleasure, danger, and defining power of those structures” (3). Therefore, the third wave of feminism, which arose in the 1990s, is based on the essential concerns of the second wave of feminism. In contrast, however, third wave feminism focuses on an individual rather than a collective feminism. Furthermore, it stresses individual identities and the intersection of identities and examines the differences between women (Heywood and Drake 54). Thus, literature on third wave feminism is concerned with discourses on these central issues.

The LIT 301 Images and Narratives of Women from Old English Epic to the Present course I took in my third semester served as an introduction to feminist literary criticism and covered literature from and about women in different time periods until the present. In addition, it focused on the introduction to the three modern waves of feminism. Based on this introduction, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary feminist literary criticism and, thus, decided to focus on fictional and non-fictional literature on third wave feminism in this project. In particular, I wanted to find out what third wave feminism is, how it evolved and how the first and the second wave of feminism influences this development. Furthermore, I was interested to see how third wave feminism is defined. In fact, I wanted to examine a variety of literature in order to get an overview of issues that the movement is concerned with and of characteristics that define it. In addition, I chose to take a look at fictional literature in order to determine whether it can be seen as third wave feminist work.

Thus, this portfolio is a collection of works on third wave feminism. Firstly, I will include an annotated list of core readings in order to get an overview on the variety of literature. Secondly, I will summarize one of the core readings, that is, Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake’s edited volume Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism which serves as a theoretical framework to define third wave feminism. And, thirdly, I will discuss and outline a possible term paper on the topic. As a result, these tasks aim to increase my awareness of fictional and non-fictional literature on third wave feminism.